Touchscreen Blackberry Thunder Pictures

New live images of the BlackBerry Thunder and its touchscreen keyboard!!

The first pictures and screenshots we have seen of the BlackBerry Thunder have been amazing, but it’s nice to finally have live hands-on photo proof that the BlackBerry Thunder is REAL and it’s working.

A quick review of the Blackberry Thunder’s touchscreen:

• Tactile Response :When you press on the Thunder’s screen, it pushes in “just” a little bit and you get instant “real” feedback - you hear an audible clicked sound, and can feel a buzz in your finger where you really pressed on the display.
• Full QWERTY and SureType entry:Hold the phone in landscape mode and you can take benefit of a full-qwerty keypad. Use the phone in portrait mode and you can enter data on a SureType keyboard. You will be able to choose/change your screen/keyboard orientation at anytime.
• Screen is made of glass and will feature multi-touch : The Thunder is said to be utilizing WebKit for it’s browser engine (same as the iPhone ), so hopefully that means a solid web browsing experience for the BlackberryThunder.

These keyboard skins are from a fairly early build of the Thunder’s 4.7 OS, but you can easily tell from the images the user-experience RIM is going after here. They want typing on the Thunder to be EASY. That means a lot of screen area dedicated to the keyboard, which makes room for bigger keys that are easy to locate and tap. RIM is famous for the ‘BlackBerry Prayer’ position users think when typing messages on their devices and it looks like that won’t change with the opening of the touchscreen Thunder.You should be able to hold the gadget with both hands and pound out emails with both thumbs blazing.

The images also provide additional confirmation that the Thunder’s operating system will still rely a lot on the BlackBerry menu button for key functions and advanced options vs. putting all options on the main screen as the iPhone 3G does. I’d guess hitting the menu key while on the Compose Message screens shown in these images should provide the standard BlackBerry menu options such as Send, Copy/Paste, Save Draft, Check Spelling, Attach file, etc.

After using an iPhone 3G and HTC Touch Diamond for a couple of days, I’ll say this: while it’s pretty, it’s not very competent at getting stuff done pretty-quick. A touchscreen BlackBerry like this may just one-up the iPhone in that department because it’s based on the speedy and efficient BlackBerry OS while also getting the benefits of a gigantic touchscreen for browsing, reading and viewing media.

Feel free to leave your reviews about Blackberry Thunder.

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